Writing in Pictures by Joseph McBride

Author:Joseph McBride [McBride, Joseph]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-74489-0
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2012-02-14T05:00:00+00:00

I will mull over this kind of premonitory device as I write my treatment and see if I can find a way to make it work effectively. Perhaps I am courting audience anger myself by letting the “bomb” in To Build a Fire go off and kill the man, but the alternative would be to contrive a way to let him escape his fate, a solution London tried in his first version of the story before realizing that it was a cop-out.

I’m also thinking of having the dog disclose the information about the hidden streams to the audience. Since the dog is more instinctively aware of natural danger, and since it’s closer to the ground, it could be shown gingerly pawing around possible trouble spots as it walks ahead of the man. The dog could bark a warning that the man fails to understand. This would also serve the purpose of building up the contrast between the animal intelligence of the dog and the obtuseness of the human character, a theme of the story that needs to be brought out through sight and sound. Perhaps both options—the bomb theory and the dog—would be worth including. Hitchcock often reiterates key story points visually, with variations, to ensure that the audience fully understands. This becomes part of the visual pleasure of participating in the storytelling.

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